Taliban Sees Mosque Controversy as Propaganda Coup
From today’s Newsweek article on the Taliban’s view of the Ground Zero mosque controversy:
[Taliban operative] Zabihullah also claims that the issue is such a propaganda windfall—so tailor-made to show how “anti-Islamic” America is—that it now heads the list of talking points in Taliban meetings with fighters, villagers, and potential recruits.
Taliban officials say they’re looking forward to a new wave of terrorist trainees from the West like this year’s Times Square car bomber: “I expect we will soon be receiving more American Muslims like Faisal Shahzad who are looking for help in how to express their rage.”
Frankly, this should hardly come as a surprise. The perception that the United States is in a war against Islam is at the core of jihadist ideology and there are few things that better fuel this perception than the virulent anti-Muslim sentiment that has been expressed in some parts of the country over the course of the last few weeks, some of which doesn’t really have any direct link to the mosque placement issue in specific. No one can know how much this will directly contribute to radicalization and/or attacks, but even taking into account Taliban commanders’ obligatory bombast, it’s pretty clear that this will become a jihadist propaganda coup and remain an easy talking point to harp on for some time to come.
Trying to convince ordinary American Muslims, especially American Muslim youth, to see America as a country that hates, fears, and rejects them has been at the center of sermons and other messages propagated by radical clerics like Anwar al-Awlaki. This is a critical step for Awlaki and others of his ilk to be able to take; though it is probably relatively easy to convince individual Muslims seeing U.S. foreign policy through a jihadist lens to fight against the United States government and military forces, justifying and promoting attacks on random American civilians in an individual’s home community – neighbors, co-workers, classmates etc. — and linking that to the broader jihadist struggle against the west might be a somewhat harder conceptual leap to make.
It is this that will likely make the whole mosque controversy and some of the outbreaks of anti-Muslim sentiment across the country such an effective propaganda tool; the massive public backlash among some ordinary Americans against the Ground Zero mosque can be easily portrayed as evidence that it is not only the U.S. government and military that is out to persecute and humiliate Muslims, but also the American people who, as a society, are out to do the same.
Hopefully this controversy and the hostility surrounding it will die down to nothing, lose traction as a potential source radicalization in the American Muslim community and abroad, and/or be channeled into some sort of constructive and meaningful dialogue that will move the fight against extremism forward rather than backwards. Whether or not this controversy diminishes in the weeks and months ahead, however, the impact will likely be felt for some time to come. Like cruise missile strikes in Sudan and sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, propaganda tools such as these, especially for al Qaeda and its allies, often long outlast their stay on the front page. If we are going to win the “war of ideas” that people keep talking about, we’re going to have to realize that public displays of barely disguised anti-Islamic sentiment, besides reflecting a deeply troubling set beliefs and prejudices on the part of much of the American public, are literally handing our enemies the tools with which to attack us where we are most vulnerable.
